Back to Glossary

Attrition Warfare

A military strategy focused on wearing down an opponent's personnel and materiel through sustained losses over time, rather than seeking rapid decisive victory through maneuver. The Ukraine war's magazine-depth problem (total available munitions stockpiles, distinct from launch-platform numbers) and force-generation bottleneck (trained personnel cannot be surged on the same timeline as equipment) are structurally the same constraint applied to two different categories of resource that attrition warfare consumes over years of sustained fighting.

Learn about this term

Related Terms

Vocabulary from all courses. Terms are cross-referenced to show where each concept appears.